New Gears of War: E-Day seasonal details emerge

E-Day's launch is just the beginning. While the campaign will find a closing point, multiplayer and Horde Siege are sure to keep you busy for some time. The Coalition took to the Gears of War website today to give intel on what's coming, and it's nice to see they've already got an idea of the theming for upcoming seasons. Check out the details below, along with our preview for the online modes.

Gears of War is back. After much anticipation and an exciting summer, early access to Gears of War: E-Day starts tomorrow for Premium Edition owners. On behalf of the entire team at The Coalition and our partners, a sincere thank you for being part of our community – we cannot wait for you to experience what we’ve built.

As we countdown the final moments to release, we wanted to share more about what you can expect in Season 1 and the changes and fixes we’ve been working on since our multiplayer Open Beta in August. We’ll also give you a sneak peek into what’s coming for Season 2.

SEASON 1: EMERGENCE

Season 1 kicks off with the Early Access release of Gears of War: E-Day and runs for 8 weeks until December 1. Post-launch seasons will vary in length, and we will communicate exact dates closer to the launch of each one.

Season 1 is packed with all our launch maps, modes, cosmetics and three limited themed events – Halloween, 20 Years of Gears, and Thanksgibbing. Each event will run for two weeks and features a Versus Event mode, a Horde Siege Event mission, and exclusive rewards.

We’ll share more on each event as we get closer to their start dates, but in the meantime, here’s everything else you need to know about Season 1: Emergence:

Ranked: Versus Ranked will officially launch one week after launch on October 13, giving players crucial time to get up-to-speed with all our maps, modes and sandbox before jumping into competitive.
Weekly Challenges: The weekly challenges Premium Edition owners receive on October 1 are the same challenges all players will receive at launch on October 6, weekly challenges will then refresh on October 13.
Shop: Shop offers will rotate every Tuesday. Be sure to check every week for free featured gifts.
Never Fight Alone Charity Bundle: 100% of net revenue of the Never Fight Alone Year 5 bundle, which includes an exclusive skin and weapon skin set, and the Never Fight Alone Legacy set, goes to our partner Crisis Text Line in our mission to prevent suicide.
Promotional Items: Cosmetic items available exclusively through limited time partnerships will become available in the Barracks for Coins and Iron after the partnership exclusivity term lapses.
Gears of War: Reloaded Rewards: To celebrate the release of the original Gears of War 20 years ago, we’re offering exclusive rewards to commemorate players’ engagement with Gears of War: Reloaded.
- Fire and Fenix Pose: Complete the “Prison Breakout” XBOX Achievement in Gears of War: Reloaded.
- Old Guard Medal & “Locked n’ Reloaded” Title: Complete the “Re-Up” XBOX Achievement in Gears of War: Reloaded.

SEASON 2: LEGACY AND BEYOND

Season 2 is called Legacy and will be dedicated to our 20^th Anniversary featuring content themed around the greatest hits of Gears of War. Crafted as a love letter to the franchise and you, our fans, you can expect a ton of new content inspired by the franchise’s most memorable moments. We’ll get the party started a little early with a special birthday gift for all Gears of War: E-Day players on November 7, the actual 20^th Anniversary date.

When our achievement list became public earlier this summer, you may have noticed the traditional Seriously achievement is back for E-Day, which we’ve named Dead Serious. A tried and true challenge, players who earn the Dead Serious achievement will also receive an exclusive Medal, Player Title, Banner, Emblem, Icon. And, for the first time ever in the franchise, a Legendary Character skin. We will debut the Dead Serious reward skin at the start of Season 2.

As we’ve shared before, Gears of War: E-Day will have at least 5 post-launch seasons. The names of the future seasons are:

Season 3: Infiltration
Season 4: Pendulum
Season 5: Devotion

MULTIPLAYER BETA GAMEPLAY FEEDBACK:

Thank you for playing the Multiplayer Beta and sharing feedback with us. We wanted to take an opportunity to shed some additional insight on some hot community topics as well as clear up any misconceptions that may exist:

GNASHER AIMING

The Gnasher is one of the most iconic and unique weapons in Gears of War – we believe it always needs to be punchy, visceral and consistent every time you pull the trigger. As many fans know, the way aiming and firing works has evolved over time, but these goals never change. Every Gears game has fired the Gnasher from the camera position when aiming with the left trigger. This results in an accurate and predictable shot from the ADS view – this is not changed in E-Day.

In Gears 2 through Gears 5, hipfire shots emitted straight ahead from the Gnasher’s muzzle. This generally works, but results in some shots missing when they look like they should hit. To improve hipfire, E-Day is the first Gears title to introduce a hybrid between muzzle and camera-oriented shooting. When you fire on a target, we check both the camera and muzzle shots and apply the one that better matches what the player would expect. This means a shot that looks like it should hit, will hit.

E-Day is a brand-new game built from scratch, so we of course will monitor both player telemetry and feedback to guide any tuning and balance adjustments.

BUILDING E-DAY FROM THE GROUND UP & FEATURE DEVELOPMENT

As we’ve stated before, we started E-Day with an empty hard drive building our entire gameplay sandbox from scratch to ensure a more unified gameplay experience across Campaign, PVE and PVP. This new sandbox also allowed for innovation in cover, combat and enemies. The trade-off being that including every legacy feature from Gears of War was not possible for launch. Those features, like Meat Shields, Chainsaw Duels, select weapons from the franchise’s past, and online work like Private Lobbies and leaderboards – are not gone from the franchise. Our team is working hard to deliver the strongest and most stable launch experience we can with an eye to how, and what, to deliver and improve on fan-favourite features either post-launch or in our next title.

More patch details are available here.